Results tagged “whatgothamist”

Warriors fans, grab your bats, face paint, and gang outfits because the Netflix Rolling Roadshow is hitting New York and showing the awesome 70's movie, The Warriors. They will be showing the movie at Asser Levy Park in Coney Island on Tuesday, August 2nd at 8:30. The coolest part of the day, however, will be before the movie when they have the "Warriors Subway Scavenger Hunt". The grand prize for the scavenger hunt is soooo awesome - nine leather "Warriors" vests (and brunch with the cast, which is nice as well). But what if you like the Baseball Furies or the pimptastic Boppers? And what about The Orphans - can't they just give their outfits out as prizes to everyone that attends the screening? We just wonder what some of the tasks of the scavenger hunt will be: knock a police officer with a billy club, make out with a woman in the subway tunnels as the train whizes by, or maybe spraypainting your gang's mark on the subway?

The sound of rumbling you hear at the World Trade Center site isn't just from construction - it's the sound of egos. Senator Chales Schumer asked Mayor Bloomberg to commit $1.75 billion in Liberty Bonds to the project and dissed the Mayor's suggestion to put residential buildings - in other words, Schumer's strategy was "criticize and ask for money." Mayor Bloomberg said no way, considering the project could "come to a grinding halt." Schumer is also asking that the Port Authority move into Freedom Tower, which is more expensive (and might take the longest to complete) - oh, and he'd like WTC developer Larry Silverstein to slash his fee for managing the project. Yes, Schumer has been very, very busy. What Gothamist cannot believe is that it's almost five years after September 11 and there's still so much fighting about trying to rebuild the area.

What do you think Steve Francis learned last night as he sat on the bench and watched his new team get destroyed by the Heat? Maybe he learned that the “cornerstone of the franchise”, Eddy Curry, has a long way to go before he can be considered a decent NBA player. Maybe he learned that his new coach still uses his entire roster 50+ games into the season. Maybe he learned that there are worse things than playing for the Magic.

The mother of police officer Eric Hernandez who died from shots fired by another officer is filing a lawsuit for $50 million in damages. Hernandez, who was off-duty when he visited a Bronx White Castle, had been beaten by a group of men and was crawling outside, with his gun in hand, when police officer Alfredo Toro responded to the scene. Toro, not realizing Hernandez was a fellow officer, shot him in the legs and abdomen when Hernandez didn't lower his gun. There is thought that Hernandez also thought Toro might have been another attacker, and doctors believe the beating affected his ability to hear. His mother, Cynthia Salich, said, "Eric is obedient. When the officers told Eric to drop the gun, he was ailing. The police officer didn't give Eric reasonable time and opportunity to lower his gun against the person he thought had attacked him inside the restaurant." What Gothamist is curious about are the reports that Hernandez was drunk when he went to the White Castle - and the fact that officers should not draw their guns when drinking. Should Hernandez's impaired judgement be on trial?

"If you can't beat 'em, psych 'em out" seems to be the tactic of the Brooklyn bagel shop that incited the ire of the MTA when it used MTA symbols. The shop, the former "F Line Bagels," was hit with a cease and desist from the MTA last March and eight month laters, fined and forced to remove the various subway signage the owners bought from the MTA. Deciding that a new sign would only be good if it could capture some of that F line goodness, the owners are installing a backwards-F sign, with one owner saying, "People can pronounce it any way they want. It'll be kind of like Toys 'R' Us." Ooh, that's a good idea - maybe they should sell toys, too, with a giraffe hawking them.

Creepy story from the city's diplomatic quarter: An Indonesian man visiting the U.S., Bambang Wielianto, was found dead, with a knife in his chest and one hand almost severed in the basement of the Indonesian Embassy on the Upper East Side. The NY Times likens it to an Agatha Christie mystery and how - there was a security guard on duty close by when he died! Wielianto had been staying in basement room at the embassy until he was able to fly out of the country, as the embassy will occasionaly put up stranded citizens for spells. Police suspect the knife that killed him was from the nearby kitchen. Although Wielinato had been trying to get home and was scheduled to leave on Wednesday, it's unclear whether or not he was killed or commited suicide. What Gothamist is curious about is whether or not, if it is a murder, the NYPD will have jurisdiction to investigat the crime - the consulate is technically Indonesian soil.

11:24PM: Mayor B is done with his speech - so far, winning by 19%.

This story shows the ingenuity and desperation of a small-time crook: The police arrested Gilbert Alicea for stealing cash from a church's donation box with a stick and double-sided tape. At St. Vincent Ferrer Church on the Upper East Side, Alicea would pretend to pray with a female accomplice, even chatting up priests, but then fished out money with his homemade stealing-money-from-a-church-collection-box gadget. Police from teh 19th Precinct were alerted by a church security guard, and caught Alicea with four special sticks. This sounds like a lot of effort to steal, what, a couple bucks a pop? This device sounds better to fishing out your ID from the sewer.

. Well, Mayor Bloomberg can chalk up this new tune to "The Result of the Weeks-Before-Election Brainstorming Session on Visionary Ideas." Senator Schumer did fault Silverstein for not being aggressive enough in getting tenants into 7 World Trade Center.

There's nothing the Post likes more than public sex stories. On Saturday, they plastered a photograph of a demure-looking Connecticut woman, Caitilin Clonan, on the cover along with the headline "Caitlin's Sex and the City and proceeded to explain how she and her boyfriend were caught kinda naked on First Street near Sixth Avenue by a police officer last Thursday. Clonan says it was a mistake, and she and boyfriend Philip Conlan were charged with public lewdness (she was naked from the waist down, Conlan had his clothes on, though the "status of his zipper was unclear") and will have to do some community service. Clonan tells the Post, "We were walking down a dark street in Brooklyn. I didn't think it was a big deal." Excellent: This proves that no matter many Gaps come into Park Slope, there is hope for grit by way of drunken young lovers!

If you ever want to figure out how to get the construction noise in your neighborhood reduced, look around to see if there's a school in the vicinity with a motived PTA. Parents at P.S. 234 in Tribeca are the subject of a NY Times article that highlights how parents were able to convince developers to meet their demands to make sure their kids' reading, writing and 'rithmetic wouldn't be unduly disturbed. They got the change the 200 Chambers Street (Sir Norman Foster!) developer to change the kind of hammers they would use at the construction site (from "pile-driving hammers" to "vibrating hammers"), which then empowered the PTA get builders at 270 Greenwich to pay $2 million for noise abatement of construction at that site - including a 20 foot sound wall. One of the parents behind the effort explains, "The competition for prime middle schools in the city is very, very intense. It's a very high-pressure situation that didn't need pile driving as a soundtrack." Yes - those kindergarten records totally matter. And let's not get started on Mayor Bloomberg's third and fifth grade social promotion tests.

So, Martha Stewart showed her Apprentice colors last night, and they were muted, tasteful, beautifully coordinated and a bit...boring. There are no noveau rococo apartment buildings, no tacky candidates, no blustering, and no George. But the Starrett-Lehigh building looks amazing. The task was to create a children's book by updating an old fairy tale classic. We'll spare you the details for all of you who Tivo'd the show and will just concentrate on the most insane thing about the show: After Martha fires someone, she writes them a handwritten note. She uses Martha Stewart Omnimedia letterhead (she's not wasting her personal engraved stationery on these chumps) and gets to work as soon as the last wheely suitcase has gone (and we blurred out who the letter is to, so no complaining about spoilers). What Gothamist was struck by was the fact that Martha's handwriting slanted, making the letter look sloppy. Why no lightbox with lined paper underneath? Why no paper with lines lightly penciled in, later to be erased by a production assistant? Did they shoot the letter writing scene a number of times, with this letter being the best one? All said, the handwritten note is a nice, if cruel touch. We've never received a handwritten note when we were fired; just enough mental anguish of how horrible our time in that employ was.

Okay, so it's crunch time for the Democratic mayoral candidates, with just hours until the polls open tomorrow and New Yorkers (hopefully) go and vote for a Democratic candidate. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer received an endorsement from Reverend Al Sharpton yesterday, which helps his frontrunner status, but many polls show the Congressman Anthony Weiner is right at Ferrer's heels - and that Ferrer still might not be able to avoid a runoff. While a lot of polls and surveys seem to indicate that Mayor Bloomberg is uncommonly popular for a Republican mayor in our blue city, the NY Times finds some voters that do want him out but, as ever, it comes down to who will actually come out and vote. The big questions are the middle-class (Miller or Weiner) and African-American population (Fields, Ferrer, or maybe even Weiner?). What Gothamist has been finding interesting in this final stretch is that we've been noticing the NY Post has been talking up Congressman Anthony Weiner's chances a lot, perhaps trying to sway voters to force Ferrer into a run-off. The latest stories about Gifford Miller seem to be more about his finance troubles, and C. Virginia Fields seems to have faded completely. Gothamist thinks it's too close to call whether or not there will be a primary. What do you think will happen tomorrow?

So, ABC has already started filming its mini-series based on the 9/11 Commssion Report. The producers had a press conference during the TV critic's press tour, and it seems that the movie will focus on the days leading up to September 11, with 180 characters, including Harvey Keitel as FBI agent-turned-World Trade Center security head John O'Neill. What Gothamist found extremely strange about this project is that it's being shot mostly in Toronto, with some filming in New York and Morocco. Producer Marc Platt said, "That was simply because of production logistics and costs. There was nothing about us not wanting to be [filming] in New York City." Logistics and cost our ass! So what if parts of Washington is shut down? Lower Manhattan isn't completely shut down, as he claims, because if Law & Order can shoot down there, why can't a TV movie? You can totally cheat locations. The way we look at it, if you film a movie about what America went through on September 11 in Toronto, you're letting the terorrists win. The mini-series will air sometime in 2006; NBC is no longer pursuing their September 11 movie.

The International Olympics Committee eliminated New York as a possible site for the 2012 Olympics in the second (of four) round of voting. Gothamist thought that watching the city selection process (starting at 6AM) was incredibly bizarre: The IOC Chairman comes out, tells how many votes were given, how many people voted, what the majority is, and then matter-of-factly says something like, "New York will not proceed to the next round of voting." When Moscow was voted out in the first round of voting, the split screen coverage showed the IOC on the right and people at Rockefeller Center cheering (so much for ending the Cold War!) on the left. Then a few minutes later, when New York was voted out, people were just quiet, and cameramen raced to find some crying NYC 2012 supporters. Then Madrid was eliminated in the third round, putting the age-old rivalry of England and France in the spotlight once again, with London and Paris in the final two. The 2012 Olympics city will be announced at 7:43AM (EST) - the IOC was running late!

Within the Taxi and Limousine Commissions's ambitious plans to bring technology to cabs might be a future where you can use Metrocards to pay your taxi fare. Sorta way: The NY Post reports that Cubic, a California-based company whose smart card technology NYC uses for Metrocards (San Francisco, Chicago, and DC use their technology too), has been looking into the possibility of new payment options, along with other possible vendors. The idea of a stored value card is one that Gothamist loves, although the current Metrocard material is too flimsy to hold up to it. However, as the MTA has debated Smart Cards to little avail, we think it's just cute that the TLC is even considering it. The TLC Chairman Matthew Daus doesn't want people to get their hopes up, either, as he emphasizes it's more important to put credit and debit payments options in place first - though they will consider plans that might offer a swipe system. What Gothamist would like to do next is figure out how to split cabs with people when you're all vying for the same one on those rain-flooded-subway work mornings.

Just about a year and a half after a final design had been revealed, Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and even developer Larry Silverstein have agreed Freedom Tower needs a design to address safety and security concerns. The past week had been filled with the NYPD's very public unhappiness with the current design and its "unsafeness", citing things like the building being too close to the street. This could delay construction for at least another year - and construction is already way off track. It's unclear what the political ramifications will be, but there's been a bit of hoo-ha-ing already, with Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver criticized Pataki and Bloomberg last week for the floundering development and Senator Schumer commending them yesterday for making this decision.

According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, New York City ranks as the 9th highest per capita income in the country. The metro (NYC, northern NJ, and Long Island) NYC region's average salary is $40,899, vs. the national average of $31,472. The NY Post makes a point of saying how "New Yorkers are way behind their neighbors to the northwest in the stately suburbs surrounding Stamford, Conn., whose $60,803 per capita income was tops in the nation." Oh, please, everyone knows that's where the i bankers with families move. San Francisco is second, with a salary of just over $46,000, while southern Jersey is 7th. What Gothamist finds funny about stats like these is that people suddenly worry, but there are probably lots of salary not being reported. We're going to try to dig around for more info, as we couldn't find the exact report. And it's not like anyone's beating down a path to Stamford.

Gothamist saw the trailer for the new Jennifer Connelly movie, Dark Water. Basically, she finds an apartment (with the help of John C. Reilly, a fellow tenant) in what looks like one of those huge NYC apartment buildings that are so big and nondescript, they look like projects, and moves in with her daughter, even though the elevator is freaky. She proclaims it perfect, but, of course, that's when the scary stuff happens: Leaky ceiling that reveals a flooded apartment above her - that hasn't occupied! Read the description at Yahoo Movies, and see the trailer at the Touchstone site. What Gothamist wants to know is hasn't she seen Panic Room? Or even Duplex? Buying a living space in NYC is never charmed - especially not when you're in a movie written by the same guy who wrote The Ring. Gothamist chortled our way through the trailer, but we might see it - IMDB says it filmed at Roosevelt Island and there seem to be some cool aerials of the city.

Given current murder rates, it seems that the city's murder rate will go down yet again this year. Newsday reports that NYC is on track "to recoard the lowest homicide rate in at least 40 years": - bout 450 for the year. Even police offices are asking "What's going on?" While murder rates alone are not the ultimate quality-of-life measures, touting low murder rates is a useful tool for Mayors and other city elected officials looking for reelection. The main reason given for the dramatic drops in murders (12% down citywide except the Bronx; nine of last year's top ten precincts with homicides have reduced murder rates) is Operation Impact, the NYPD initiative that deployed police officers into "Impact Zones" with high rates of crime, and the dedication of the police and communities to working together. A John Jay criminologist, Rick Curtis, tells Newsday, "Everyone thinks New York will eventually bottom out, and yet it hasn't; it keeps going down," while a Harlem police source says that medical technology has also helped attempted murders from turning into murders. What Gothamist found interesting is that while many areas in the city are reducing their crime rates, the Bronx "bucks the trend," which probably means its crime reductions are less than the average or they have some crimes that have been more difficult for the police to conquer. We expect the NYPD to put more presence there.

NY State will no longer impose the death penalty as State Assembly Democrats have killed a bill that would have brought it to the whole Assembly for a vote. NY State started to impose the death penalty in 1995, after Governor Pataki used the issue as part of his campaign platform when he ran against Mario Cuomo in 1994. However, last year, the death penalty was found unconstitutional by an appeals court. The AP notes that no one has ever been executed in NY since the death penalty was enacted. Assembly Republicans say they may fight for the death penalty in a floor vote, proving that the issue will be a political fight between the two parties. What Gothamist found interesting was to be reminded that Democrat Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, who is the Assembly Leader, actually supported the death penalty, though his support has "cooled" of late; Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is also a death penalty supporter.

The surprising support of Reverend Al Sharpton for the Jets' West Side Stadium plan is making people wonder what this really means for the Mayor's preferred plan. Sharpton, along with a few other key black Democrats like Representative Charles Rangel, has argued that supporting the Jets' plan needs to come before party politics, because the Jets are making efforts to make sure that minorities will get some of the construction jobs. Sharpton also pointedly said that Cablevision's plan offers nothing, leaving Cablevision to say their minority construction initiative would equal or exceed whatever the Jets are proposing. What Gothamist is curious about is how the Mayor will capitalize on this kind of cross-the-party lines support - even though Sharpton has promised to endorse a Democrat in the mayoral primary - for his pet project; Bloomberg has already made sure to hire key black Democratic strategists to work on his re-election campaign. What we do think is funny is how other Democrats are trying to make a case for the stadium in Queens; though there may be merits, the thing is that the Jets just don't want to be in Queens, it just seems like only a talking point to us that's just not feasible given the various parties' interests.

Wal-Mart has decided not to continue plans to be in a Queens shopping mall after a lot of community and political opposition. According to the NY Times, Wal-Mart and Vornado Realty Trust, developers of the Rego Park project that would include other retail space and apartment towers, thought that Wal-Mart's continued presence would jeopardize the entire plan. What Gothamist found interesting is that apparently Vornado was hoping to keep it quiet that Wal-Mart was part of the proposal, in order to keep opposition to a minimum; it just seems so insulting and sneaky to try to hide that the country's biggest retailer might be moving into the neighborhood. Sure, Wal-Mart has low prices and people in the community could benefit from that, but Wal-Mart is a non-union shop and has treated employees badly - no matter what their ads want people to think. Now, if it were a Target, we imagine people would be close to dancing in the street. This comes after BJ's Wholesale Club decided not to build in the Bronx, though they may try again later.

What do you think of these ideas? Last year, the IBO suggested a latte tax.